Various types of containers or baskets are used for holding food products during cooking. For instance, wire form baskets are used for holding various types of food products, such as potatoes, pies, meat products and the like in a deep frying apparatus. Typically, the baskets are loaded with the bulk food products and are lowered into a reservoir of hot frying oil. In preparing french fried potatoes, for instance, a typical wire form basket simply is of an open-top structure, rectangular in configuration, and includes upright side walls about a bottom wall. One or more handles may be provided for manually or automatically lowering the wire form basket and food products into the hot frying oil.
Another type of food product prepared by a deep frying apparatus is chicken filets. If the filets simply are deposited in a bulk-type basket as described above for potato products, the filets tend to curl-up during cooking. Such a product not only appears to be smaller in size, but the curled-up filets are difficult to use in sandwich products, such as in high volume restaurants or similar establishments. Even if the filets are arranged on a flat support, the filets still have a tendency to curl-up during cooking. Restaurants have been using shelved wire form baskets to address these problems.
These wire baskets that are used to fry food, though, are subjected to extreme cooking conditions that include extreme pressures and high temperatures. Further, due to the nature of the kitchen environment within restaurants and the speed at which the cooks and their machines must operate, these wire baskets are subjected to abusive treatment. Under such cooking conditions and kitchen environments, these baskets are often damaged and are in need of repair. In particular, current wire baskets have a tendency to warp and detach at the wire connection points after only a limited amount of use. Thereby, these wire baskets start to fall apart making them much less effective or even inoperable for their intended use in a relatively short time period. These wire baskets then have to be sent off for repairs that can take an extended amount of time. Thus, the users of the wire baskets, such as restaurant, will likely need multiple wire baskets for each cooking apparatus in order to prevent the possibility of creating unscheduled and unwanted downtime for the respective cooking apparatus.
A need exists for basket apparatuses for holding food products in a cooking apparatus that can withstand the cooking conditions within which the basket apparatuses are placed to permit for an extended use life of the basket apparatuses with less down time for repairs.